Instant On and Linux
More and more companies are starting to sell computers with some sort of “instant on” Linux. It started with Asus, and now HP and Dell have jumped on, too. While these sorts of things at currently being marketed as a small convenience feature, it seems to me that they are the future - and, thus, a big potential for Linux.
As it stands now, a few people will begin to get these instant on Linux distros. Of these people, some will ignore it, but others will start to use it some amount of the time. As the instant on environments get more advanced and more widespread, a greater precentage of the people who get them will start to use them, and for a greater amount of time. Logically, if you extend this trend, pretty much everyone is using an instant on environment for almost everything they do. Unfortunately, with the current situation, this may not happen.
In order for instant on environments to meet the needs of more people for more of what they do, the instant on environments have to get more flexible. At first, this may just mean adding more applications, something that will almost certainly happen in time. There gets to a point, though, where even more flexibility is needed. This is where the problem is.
Instant on environments are currently viewed as a small convienence feature - not a full-time OS. This may mean that the current players will be slow to see the need for the ability to install new applications, or interact with the rest of the hardware, and so on. For this reason, it may be nessessary for another software maker to come in and take it to the next level. This could be an independent company, a Linux distro (such as Ubuntu), or really anything, but if instant on is going to evolve into a full-time OS, it needs someone who has a vested interest in making that happen, not just getting the same few features on lots of computers.
